Experimental Study of Fatigue Behavior of UltraHigh Toughness Concrete Used for Bridge Continuous Decks

Abstract:

A novel high performance fiber reinforced concrete ultrahigh toughness concrete (UHTC) is expected to have promising applications in civil engineering due to its outstanding ductility. A series of fatigue tests were conducted on 3 continuous decks to study the fatigue properties of UHTC used as the structural joints in bridge continuous decks with different steel reinforcement ratios. The test results show that the UHTC specimens exhibit a significant multicracking behavior and good ductile failure characteristics under the fatigue load. The fatigue life of the UHTC continuous deck is more than three times that of the ordinary RC continuous deck at the same stress level. Under fatigue loading, the presence of UHTC can effectively reduce the increase of plastic strain in steel reinforcement, decrease the bending stiffness degradation, and improve the fatigue life of continuous deck structure.

Key words:engineered cementitious composites (ECC); ultrahigh toughness concrete (UHTC); continuous deck structure; fatigue test; fatigue life